


All You've Ever Known

by kuro49



Series: the deep end of the pool [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Community: dckinkmeme, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Past Underage, Unrealized Grooming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25735438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Dick is not supposed to be in town, but then again neither is Jason.Of all the implications one word can make, this makes all the differences when Jason says: "B-bruce."
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne
Series: the deep end of the pool [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1987336
Comments: 32
Kudos: 269





	All You've Ever Known

**Author's Note:**

> for this prompt on the dckinkmeme because what's the point of coming up with my own ideas when everyone else's ideas are so great: Dick Has Always Been Suspicious of Bruce and Jason's Relationship ([full prompt here with lots of great juicy deets](https://dckinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/766.html?thread=1036798#cmt1036798)) cue lots of dick pov while jason and bruce fuck. 
> 
> flashbacks imply underage sex between robinjay and bruce but the explicit sex scene is between adult jason and bruce. jason doesn't see his relationship with bruce as anything less than love with full enthusiastic consent on both ends, but grooming/abuse/non con are all tagged for precisely that reason.

Dick isn't a half bad detective by any measures at all. But his family, in all its fractured fragmented whole, in all its complexity, is made of unforgiving liars. Damn good ones, near perfect liars without tells.

The Cave leaves a familiar chill across his skin as he begins his descend. It's nice with the blazing summer heat outside. Cicadas drowning out any other noise along the treeline of the property. Hot and dry and dripping sweat down the column of his spine to soak into the waistband of his jeans.

This here is Dick's home in a way he never thought one place could be. 

A circus kid that's travelled more in the eight years before his parents' death than what most people do in their lifetime. No matter how many missions across the world or into outer space, no matter how many years he's made Blüdhaven _his_ , the Cave always welcomes him home with its long casting shadows while the bat wings shuffle from high above. It's a rare day to have him coming downstairs from the Manor instead of roaring into the Cave on his motorcycle but then again, Dick is not supposed to be in town.

An impromptu visit to grab a few frozen containers of Alfred's special soup and a quick chat with Bruce for the man's opinions on a few cold case files he's trying to work on.

Dick is five steps down the staircase when he hears it.

It's an uneasy heave of a breath shuddering out from between teeth, it's one that breaks down into an aborted shout of: " _Fuc—_ " 

It starts and stops there. The rest of the word dissolving into a long rough groan that shorts out like a fried wire. 

Dick is not supposed to be in town, but then again neither is Jason. And that is Jason's voice even as it comes out as a groan, a reedy breathy whine that feels obscene.

Dick has plenty of complicated feelings when it comes to Jason. A little brother-not-quite. For all the good that Jason does for Gotham, his method is ruthless with no room for mistakes. One kill shot made is the death of a life. It's irreversible. Permanent. As an outlier himself, Jason counters that his method creates results. He advocates that maybe people in their positions don't get the luxury for any chance to make the wrong call.

Jason is family, estranged in some ways, but Dick remembers the kid that wore his colours after him. He didn't appreciate it at that time, but that is on Dick. Jason was a good kid. And if Dick still sees flickers of that same kid when he looks at Jason now, it's not all nostalgia. 

It's a good amount of love too. 

Dick takes another step down, silent instead of just quiet. Because that's the sound of an opened mouth kiss. Dick has had his share of romantic experiences in the Batcave, he knows exactly how the sounds carry and echo and linger all around. It is a whole lot of morbid curiosity when there is an especially slick slide of tongue against tongue, a moan suffocating in between, and the creak of leather bearing weight.

"B- _bruce_." 

Of all the implications one word can make. 

This makes all the differences.

The horror hits like a particularly sharp stab, precise in its devastation as the knife goes deep just to twist. It is a hollow drop in his stomach, so much dread sitting like solid weight as he takes the next step down. The sole of his shoe falls steady even if nothing feels that way. Dick keeps to the shadows, a vantage point in the curve of the stairs that keeps him completely out of sight. 

He sees Jason with Bruce.

This here leaves nothing to the imagination. This, here, leaves no room for anything but the _truth_.

Dick remembers.

Like a tickle at the back of his neck, stray rough strands of his own hair dragging at the nape.

Dick doesn’t like coming back to the Manor. It starts with one argument, it continues with many more. He doesn’t see right, he doesn’t breathe right. He tries, god does he fucking try, but it never feels right when it always comes back to the same thing, this tenuous pull between Bruce's inability to compromise and Dick's own inability to give in like he's always done. 

Dick is in his full Nightwing regalia, domino mask in place, when he comes roaring in on his motorcycle.

What he sees makes him frown.

It's the wide breadth of Bruce's back sitting in front of the computer. Robin's arms are draped over Bruce's shoulders, limp with deep sleep. His legs are dangling from each side of Bruce's hip, bare feet inches from brushing the Cave floor. 

Bruce turns to see him approach.

Dick's eyes follow the line of the man's neck. Sees the top of Jason's unruly curls still damp from the shower, sees the slope of Bruce's arm keeping Jason draped all along his front. 

Dick's gaze settles where Bruce's hand rests: Curving over Jason's upper thigh, just below his hips. Bruce's broad palm curves high up along the exposed skin where bandages are wrapped neatly around the muscle. Jason's gym shorts have ride up, the hem sitting all the way to the crease where his groin meets the top of his thigh.

It should be innocent. But it doesn't feel that way. 

And Dick has to wonder why this bubbling sensation of discomfort starts up in his gut. 

"Isn't Jay a bit too old to still be held like that?"

It's an offhand comment, something to say in the stillness of the Cave when he turns off the engine and hops off his bike. Bruce is standing up from the chair, Jason being held cradled to his chest not unlike a koala.

Jason is fourteen if Dick remembers correctly.

At fourteen, Dick was not being carried around like dead weight, not even on his worst nights. Not even when he broke his right leg in three separate places where he was thrown from a moving car as Robin. At fourteen, Dick was going through a wicked round of puberty. Physical contact never bothered him, he was tactile and touchy by nature. Physical contact at fourteen though, that was weird no matter how he looked at it.

Even if Jason is smaller than he was at that age, only beginning to pick up weight under Alfred's strict regimen of nutritional food intake. At fourteen, Bruce never offered to hold him in any way like this.

It isn't any _one_ thing that gets Dick to wonder. It is Bruce's non-answer, the way he gives a small shrug, a gentle tilt of his shoulder that doesn't jostle Jason. 

It is Jason wrapping his arms around the back of Bruce's neck with his eyes closed and his entire body relaxed where he is curled up, his head nuzzling against the man, tuned out to the world beyond Bruce all around him. It is Jason burrowing closer as Bruce heads upstairs with him, the soft little sigh he lets out when Bruce tightens his hold. One of his hand curving against the small of Jason's back, the other tucking under Jason's ass to keep him from slipping out of his embrace.

"I'll be right back." Bruce murmurs between the soft breaths Jason lets out. It is so quiet in the Cave, it feels like Dick can count the seconds it takes for Jason to exhale.

Dick can't be convinced that Bruce isn't saying any of that to Jason instead of him.

"I'll be right here." Dick answers when Bruce is already too far gone and won't be able to make out a single word he says in reply.

Dick watches them go.

Suspicion is just that.

And memories thought false, exaggerated by the anger in his eyes each time he sees Bruce and a kid that goes by a name he didn’t want to give up, are coming true with or without warning. He thought he'd forgotten but that figment of his imagination reels its ugly, ugly head, and it feels very much like he is too many years too late.

If Dick thought he's failed Jason before, well, it barely compares to what he is feeling now.

Jason has his head thrown back against the glass case of his own memorial.

The Robin suit in suspension behind him.

The shadows cast a good portion of the Cave in the dark, but the case is always kept in focus. Like a collective weight heavy in grief, it sits center stage with the spotlight from high above shining down on it. And there is no mistaking what is going on when Bruce is leaning back from the opened mouth kiss he is sharing with Jason to slide down on to his knees in front of him.

Where he is rooted in place, Dick cannot afford to look away. 

It feels like punishment, a particularly cruel one too when Jason doesn't stifle the noise that comes out of him as Bruce swallows him down. Familiarity in how he moves as Bruce kneels at his feet. The tips of Jason's ears have gone all pink. His hand reaching down from where it rests at his side to wind itself into Bruce's hair.

It's the sound of Bruce's name again, coming apart from between the bright red part of Jason's bitten lips.

"Ah- _h_."

High flush across Jason's cheeks, each breath coming to him as thought it is being wrung out of his lungs, his hair looking more disheveled than Bruce's. Out of his leather jacket and in just his underarmour, Jason moves easily even with Bruce's hands pinning his hips to the glass. His back arches and he tugs harshly at Bruce's hair as the man takes him even deeper inside of his wide stretched mouth.

" _B_ ." A gasp, a barely stifled whimper and Jason is bowing over Bruce. "F _-fuck_ , that's too deep."

Jason's voice sounds scratchy, like it always does when he is about to burst into tears. It may be a rare occurrence since he came back from the dead, Jason when he is younger could really cry. Dick is too far now to really see but he remembers how red the rim of Jason's eyes can get when he is close to tears. Without the helmet or the domino mask he habitually wears underneath, Dick is reminded of just how young Jason is.

After his death, after his crusade to make Bruce rectify his mistake, and beyond that to this tentative truce where Batman turns a blind eye to most of Red Hood's reign, and it is the sight of Bruce's hand moving that has Dick flinching.

From the sharp cut of Jason's hip, exposed where the waistband of his pants has been yanked down to gather over where his holsters are pulled taut around his thighs, Bruce's hand drags over the curve of Jason's ass to dip in between. Jason just about crumples as Bruce works two fingers inside, pulls back with his mouth just to press his digits further, spreads them wide while Jason shakes apart above him. 

There is a litany of swear words to come falling out of Jason, scatters in the distance that doesn't exist between Bruce and him.

Dick wants to curse out all those exact words too.

But said in anger, in disgust, in justified horror. Family do not do what they are doing now.

Dick remembers.

Like the hairs rising on his arm in reaction to an indescribable chill in a still room.

He knows he should've tried a lot earlier than now when it comes to Jason. But Dick was eighteen turning nineteen, hot headed and upset when Bruce first took Jason in. It is a combination of a lot of bad things, shitty timing and near non-existent communication on both ends of the conversation. All of it leaves a particularly bad taste to linger in Dick's mouth.

Dick was angry at a lot of things, mostly Bruce, and Jason just so happens to be the unlucky kid to stand within proximity as collateral damage. Dick took a long time to figure this out, but Jason is his brother in everything but blood. 

He is trying, and he is still trying now.

"You know you can always come to me for anything." Dick nudges him with a shoulder where they are standing next to one another in the decontamination chamber.

When the fan turns on, they will have to shout over the noise to be heard. 

A lucky shot that ended with them in this predicament. A can of aerosol fear gas in concentrate collected for evidence exploding upon impact of a stray bullet fragment that ricocheted off of a wild shot made by one of Scarecrow's goons. Even up to date on all of their fear gas immunizations and handling a can of expired fear toxins, there are precautions to be followed. Nightwing takes Robin back to the Cave for an early night without Batman needing to even say a single word to prompt it.

All of that lead up to this exact moment: The two of them alone in decontamination. Away from any of the surveillance cameras and impossible to listen in on.

Jason looks over at him, gives him a raised eyebrow and the most exaggerated look of disbelief. "I dunno, Dick. Your city tends to keep you busy enough."

Even if it is true most of the time, Dick wants that to change. Dick fakes hurt, clutches a hand to his chest and gasps audibly over the start of the loud whirring of the fan above them. Makes it clear to the kid that he is willing to change if Jason will have him. 

"I'm just kidding." Jason laughs, and it's muffled over the sterilizing spray coming out at them from every potential angle. In between each timed burst to keep from getting it inside of his mouth, Jason tells him. "I'm good. Promise. I've got Bruce and Alfie and Babs here, and _you_ too."

Dick smiles, soaks in the words, and he is glad. He really, truly is. 

They begin to strip down for the second round, this time out of their suits. And maybe it's a little bit weird to bring this up now when they are both standing entirely in their birthday suits. Dick starts, unsure.

"You and Bruce." 

"We're partners." 

Dick can't quite explain why Jason's answer makes him pause. He thinks it is the word: _Partners_ said in that tone. Soft, and quick but sure.

Like he's convinced himself of it regardless if it holds true or not.

That bothers him. Because it's as though there is more than just the surface meaning here, like there is something to that singular vocabulary that goes murky with depth. It leaves Dick uneasy even when he doesn't know why he should be. Bruce has never been anything but a father to him.

"So," Dick asks, "I take it that means Robin's not a sidekick anymore?"

Jason laughs again, not looking at Dick, and Dick isn't entirely sure if that's because they are in the nude or if there's something else in place all together. Dick has a knack for reading people, and if experience and practice are striped away, the comparison is for naught. Dick can read anyone better than Bruce can.

And right now Jason isn't lying to his face but it sure doesn't feel like the complete truth with this answer.

"B told me." Jason tells him. It's a well rehearsed line when he keeps going. "Made sure I got it. I'm his partner, not a sidekick."

If there is anything amiss, Dick isn't about to find it in any of the mottled bruises over Jason's body when every single one can be conveniently explained as an aftermath of patrol, of being tossed around by goons three times his size. It comes with the territory, of being manhandled each night, hand shaped bruises and rope burns in all kinds of precarious places.

In the silence following the final wash down, Dick shakes water from his eyes and wipes at his cheeks.

"My offer still stands, Jay."

Jason looks over, eyes bright beneath matted dark hair and lashes still dripping with water, his smile pulling wide with teeth. "Thanks, Dickie."

In the face of a smile like that, Dick thinks he can try again the next time.

(Except there was no next time.)

The next time he sees Jason again, he's eighteen, maybe nineteen, the time he spent in a coffin and buried six feet under not entirely countable, and Jason is in a pit rage, hell bent on bringing destruction to the delicate balance Batman has with Gotham's rogues.

And by then, Dick has had more pressing issues to address when it comes to his little brother-not-quite.

Dick doesn't want to be right.

Because that means a lot of things have gone wrong for a very long time and all of it feels like a gut punch delivered by Bane himself. 

Bruce bodily turns Jason around, presses him into the glass, and Jason's profile is illuminated in the light from the memorial case. It's the same smile with teeth pulling across Jason's lips. Dick wishes he can't hear a single word of the truths they are admitting to now.

"Stop lying to yourself, B. You'll _love_ it if I wore it again." Jason has a palm pressed to the glass to brace himself, and without his gloves, his fingerprints smear like something particularly incriminating. "Just as much as you loved it when I was half as big as I'm now." 

It feels like a confessional, and Dick is forced to keep every last dirty little secret to come surfacing from the dark.

"Still remember how big you felt that first time you'd fucked me in the back seat of the Batmobile." Jason keeps going, each word leaving behind a cloud of condensation against the glass. His lashes quiver, eyes half-lidded. "Can't forget how I found my scaly green panties on the floor of the Batmobile the next night too."

Jason moans at something that Bruce does, three fingers buried to the last knuckle inside of his ass and stretching him out further. Every pass drags across his prostate, gets him making another noise that comes from deep within the confines of his chest where he is pinned. 

"I just remember how hard you got each time you sat in the same spot where I fucked you." Bruce answers, and he is finally pulling out his fingers to steady himself by the base of his cock.

"As hard as you're now?" Jason grinds back, and his soft burst of laughter gets cut short when Bruce doesn't give him a moment at all and pushes inside of him. He fills him out, and Jason makes it clear just how full he is by the way he tries to find any kind of purchase against the smooth glass of his own Robin case.

There's something particularly cruel in that, Dick thinks.

"Jaylad."

Bruce breathes out, and there is so much reverence in that one word alone when Jason keens in response.

Dick stands rooted in the spot at the top of the stairs, frozen, ice down the line of his spine and entirely silent. Bruce only sees Jason, and it's the same thing the other way around. It's the nickname that gives it away because that's intimate. 

The first time he's heard Bruce calling Jason that, Jason's cheeks have gone pink. That was years ago, the third or fourth time Dick came back to the Manor for an Alfred mandated holiday dinner. At the dinner table for Christmas, the three of them sitting at one end of the long oak antique in the nice dining room that Alfred insists on. 

They looked like a family, they felt like one too. 

Or, that's what Dick thought this whole time. 

It was a good night in a long string of not great ones where Dick would stumble through the narrow window of his Blüdhaven apartment in the early hours of the morning, hurt and exhausted and due to show up for his shift in less than four hours. He remembers Bruce calling Jason that, and smiling around a spoonful of Alfred's soup. It was a good memory up until now.

In this moment, Dick just feels sick to the stomach. 

Jason sighs out Bruce's name too, and it's said with so much contentment. Near pleading with every thrust, each little _ah_ punctuating every turn Bruce is buried to the hilt inside of him. 

Dick isn't sure which of the things he's seen is the worst of it all. But he can be convinced that it might just be the way Bruce puts his hand over Jason's, threading their fingers together against the glass. The warm press of their palms leaving an imprint of the two of them behind, hovering over the chest piece of Jason's Robin suit held in suspension before them.

Dick doesn't think they could get any closer when they are already pressed so close. But as Bruce leans in where he is draped against the line of Jason's spine, brackets him in within the wide breadth of his arms, he brushes his mouth to the nape of Jason's neck. He renders the distance between them to nothing at all.

As Jason moves, he moves for Bruce.

Easy, sure.

Like they've done this plenty of times before. Jason tips his head forward and lets the back of his shirt slip down a few more inches, baring skin covered in days-old love bites for Bruce to leave behind brand new ones. 

Dick doesn't want to be a witness to this. To what should be romance warped so far out of shape.

From Jason to Jay to Jaylad, and all the in betweens when said with different inflections and tones, Jason reacts to each one accordingly. 

"It's always only ever been you, Jason." 

"I know, old man."

When Bruce comes, he comes spilling inside of the warm tight welcoming clench of Jason's body. And as Jason comes into Bruce's fist, the callouses rough, his grip tight and perfect and just as Jason likes it, he streaks his memorial case in white. Painting a pretty obscene picture, his semen dripping down the glass to stain the plaque at its base, and it's the same smile when he turns his head to draw Bruce into a kiss in their shared afterglow.

It lasts a long time.

Dick doesn't watch them go this time around. 

He leaves first.

bonus.

"You and Bruce."

Jason looks over at Dick, and Dick can't imagine what he sees. They are a whole city away from the Cave. They aren't even in their vigilante uniforms. Here in Dick's Blüdhaven apartment, Dick is just Dick and Jason can be Jason out of the shadow of the Bat.

Jason sees what Dick means by those words alone. Except he really fucking doesn't, as Dick keeps finding. 

"Mad that it wasn't you?" Jason tries for bravado. And in self-defence because he has never once been able to keep still and take each lashing. He has bled for too many times to have his blood be the first blood drawn again. Venom laces each word as he bites out his retort. "Maybe for once, he doesn't want someone perfect."

Except Dick just looks sad.

For _him_ , Jason is coming to realize. 

"You—" And it's a realization that hits harder than Jason thought it could. "You're not jealous." 

Dick breathes out on a heave, loud and heavy to set like a brick between them. "I'm a lot of things but no, I'm not jealous about this. I'm horrified, Jay. I'm also upset, and I'm so fucking angry."

Jason doesn't understand.

Because people get angry at Jason. People get upset at him. People are rightfully horrified at all the things he's done and the things he still does. 

No one has ever told him they felt any one of those emotions on his behalf.

"You shouldn't be." Jason points out from his spot on Dick's old ratty sunken couch, pulls his legs to his chest from where they were stretched out on the low coffee table. His voice softer this time around, with none of the hard edges. "B isn't doing anything wrong."

Dick's mouth is still drawn into a thin flat line and his face is creased between the brows. His voice is steady but Jason has seen him angry many, many times before, and Dick is barely keeping it together. The difference being Jason is not the target of an ounce of that anger. That is new.

"Then why keep it a secret at all?"

"You don't get it, Dickie." Jason runs a hand through his hair, tugs harshly at the white tangled among the dark strands at the front as he tries to explain it to Dick in a way that makes any sense at all. Because it does, he swears. "He's shitty in a lot of ways, I know that better than _anyone_. Bruce can't see the flaws or how hypocritical he is when it comes to his own moral code. But he isn't bad."

"And if it was Tim instead?"

"Christ, Dick. He's a _kid_." Jason flinches, and he is trying to keep a leveled head but he never quite see things right when it's got anything to do with Bruce. "B would never—"

Dick cuts in, and his voice is hard and strained and brittle in his plead. "Little wing."

"He never hurt me. He's only ever loved me." Jason tells him, and he isn't sure who desperately needs the convincing when they cannot both be right.

"He was grooming you, Jay."

"He didn't, I would know." Jason keeps going, conviction steel in his voice. "I would've been able to tell."

Dick holds his gaze, and there is a lot of heartbreak contained in this one room so far from where they both once called home.

"You were a kid, Jason. You didn't have to know." The heart of the matter lies in this one core truth: "But _he_ did."


End file.
